


Homecoming

by anenigmaticsmile



Series: Seventeen Years [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Orzammar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 21:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12803118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenigmaticsmile/pseuds/anenigmaticsmile
Summary: "When you're small, or branded - or Stone forbid, both - you have to make yourself big."Natia Brosca returns home to Orzammar after eight terrifying, beautiful months fighting for the world.





	Homecoming

“When you’re small,” she explains as she tumbles metal around in her hands, “or branded, or Stone forbid both – you have to make yourself big.  You have to be big and scary so no one messes with you.  Because otherwise – well.”  She gives a mirthless laugh and tosses her head, glancing up into their worried eyes.  “That’s better left unsaid.”

“Nati…”  Leliana sighs; she’s always the first to call Natia out on her little dancing lies.

But Natia just smiles back up at her.  “It’s really not that big a deal.  Just putting on a show, you know?”  She fumbles the earring at her ear for the third time and groans in frustration.  “Give me a hand here, will you?”

Leliana drops to her knees and takes up the offending metal.  The piercing has nearly closed up after half a year’s disuse, and it bleeds as she secures the earring.  “Surely you have enough of these already?”

“What?  There’s no such thing, Leli.”

“No such thing as enough piercings?”

“Well, I suppose.  Once you’ve filled the ears then you go to the face.  Once that’s gone, then maybe there’s enough?  But don’t worry.  I didn’t keep all of my locks.  I’ve only got, what, fifteen?”

“You want my help putting fifteen piercings in.”

Natia gives the quiet, tired laugh she’s been giving so much as they get deeper into the mountains.  “Zev’s offered to help already, so you don’t have to, if you don’t want.”  And there’s maybe something in her eyes that is begging Leliana to keep helping; if it’s there, she does a good job tamping it down.

“I have first watch, Nati, I’m sorry.”  Leliana attempts to look contrite as she gives a half smile and rolls back to her feet, escaping with her flimsy excuse.

“It’s fine,” Natia says, but she doesn’t quite mean it.

\--

The Frostbacks are more than freezing; they are lethally cold.  Suddenly, Natia’s insistence on the purchase of extra furs with what little had remained of their money makes so much more sense.  Most of them are tied up in several layers, draped about their shoulders and over their heads and across their faces to warm the lung-biting air.  Even Sten wears a pair of furs draped across his shoulders.  But the tiny dwarf wears the most.

“Orzammar’s built on lava,” she explains, bungled in fur around a high fire.  “It’s always cold up here.”  And that is true.  What’s also true is the effect of the cold on her half-shaved head and the metal in her ears and face.  Even with the furs, she comes close to losing her ears to the bitter winds.

She still insists it’s worth it.

\--

Natia makes quiet promises at the doors to Orzammar even as the guard’s spit dries on her face – on her brand.  Her words are quiet and sharp and the guard collapses before her.  It’s a startling reminder: the Wardens don’t welcome the weak.

\--

Orzammar itself is a new kind of hell for all of them.  It’s too small, for the first, needing them to duck under doorways and bend in hallways and do an awkward sort of folding into chairs.  And it’s hot, way too hot.  They’re all dripping sweat before they even exit the Hall of Paragons into Orzammar proper.  And the stares they collect – the stares, indeed.

“Do they always gawk like this, or is it that we are a spectacle?”  Morrigan muses after a merchant drops his flask at the sight of her.

Normally that would rise a laugh out of Natia.  Here it doesn’t even warrant a backwards glance.

And that’s the other thing.  Everyone but Natia is unsettled here, walking with a different step, walking almost smaller in this world that they’ve never seen, don’t understand.  But Natia walks stronger than she does on the surface.  Her back is ramrod straight as she swaggers through the crowd, hands resting on the hilts of her swords.  She scans the crowds with piercing eyes and glares down anyone who gets in her way.

If it weren’t so different from the Natia he knew, Alistair might find it beautiful, the way the crowd parts before her.  Sure, she gets dirty looks and none-too-few dwarves swear at her, “accidentally” drop something into her path.  Sure, the guards are following them much closer than is strictly necessary.  But that doesn’t matter.  It’s not the whole story.  They shoot dirty looks and swear and throw things but none of them meet her eyes.  None of them are even bold enough to hold their heads high when she glances them over.

And the guards don’t stop them when she strides up to the Diamond Quarter, land she grew up next to but has never set foot on, and demands entrance.

“Warden Natia Brosca,” she says, jutting her chin at the taller of the two, tilting her head to show off her brand and her piercings.  “I have business inside.”

\--

(Rica meets them inside, but it’s not a sisters’ greeting they give each other.  There are no smiles, no hugs.  Just a quick handshake and a walking away.  It’s been a little too long for both of them.)

\--

They don’t sleep in the Diamond Quarter, that night.  The Diamond Quarter isn’t for sleeping.  It’s for getting information.  It’s unsettling, the way the business is conducted; Natia, who normally stumbles over her short words in a twisting accent, holds fast-paced conversations that waver on a line between Trade and something older, her accent sliding easily in and holding fast.  More than once, her friends stop her after the merchant has turned back to his work.

“What did he say?” they ask, “I couldn’t follow.”

Natia answers, back to the short, wobbling Trade she speaks around them.  “Said old Aeduc is dead.”  At questioning looks, she drops the irreverence.  “The king.  And the kids, too.  Not unusual.”

But after the information is collected, after Natia pulls them away from yet another merchant hawking out blades – “Not his blades to sell, I’ll swear on it” – they leave the Diamond Quarter.  Natia takes them to a tavern in the Commons that she knows well.

The barkeep steps out as soon as he sees her.  “Don’t need you running around here, duster.  We ain’t hosting no one today, and we ain’t taking threats, neither.”

“Put your britches back on, Gun,” Natia scowls, dropping down into her words.  “Ain’t here on Carta business.”

“Face like yours not on Carta?  The fuck you here for, then?  All us knows you ain’t buying no ale.  Not here ‘least.”  He rocks backwards and crosses his arms, sneering down his nose at her.

Natia pretends not to notice she’s a good half-head shorter than he is as she stares back up at him.  “Rent two rooms, I’m doing.”  She flashes a silver between her knuckles.  “An’ I’m paying you fair for ‘em, too.”

Gun grunts and flashes out a hand.  “I ain’t asking where it’s from, I know what’s good for me.  Just want to check it’s real.”

Natia laughs.  “You sure don’t think I’m stiffing you, right, Gun?  Not with a brand like mine, tell you that.”

He hits the coin he’s offered with one of the many rings on his fingers.  A clear bell-tone sounds and he shakes his head.  “I guess you tell truth, then.  Two rooms, it is.  Any ale, food, cover, you want?”

“Just the rooms, Gun.  We take care of ourselves.”

“50 silvers, then.”  He cocks sideways, challenging her.

“Fuck you, Gun!  Who’s stiffing who, now?”

Gun scoffs “25 silver a room.  That’s my price.”

The patrons who’ve been staring through the exchange return to nursing their drinks as the conversation steps towards a familiar barter.

“Not if you want board it ain’t!  I pay less ‘an that for a room of whores topside.”  Natia pulls the word ‘whores’ a little sideways, and it almost feels like a different word altogether.  Something older, maybe.

“What those damn humans are willing to whore themselves out for ain’t none of my business, duster.  50 silver take it or leave.”

“30 and not a copper more!  Nug-humper of a cheapskate, you.”  Natia almost sits back to wait for the counter before she notices Alistair starting to drift away.  “Al. Ass. Stay.”  And he sidles grumpily back into place behind her.

“I’ll do you 40 and not a bit less.  And that’s only because I like you.”

“If you like me so much, what’s my name?  Tell me that, an’ I’ll do you 40, you son of a whore.”

Gun laughs, really laughs.  “Son of a whore!  If you ain’t Natia Brosca, you ain’t breathing.”  He smirks and adds, “Little Lightning ain’t real easy to forget ‘round here.”

Natia groans.  “40, then.  An’ I’ll throw in a copper if you never call me that again.”

“What, Natia Brosca?  Or you mean Little Lightning.”  A stern look gives him his answer and he chuckles it off.  “Fine, fine.  Actually, I ain’t seen Tongue round here much.  You leave him dead somewhere?”

She drops the coins into his waiting hand and storms past him without an answer.  There are lines.

\--

They keep the rooms for a few days.  It’s a lot of back and forth and all around, gathering information while Natia tries to figure out who she’s willing to back.  (It really doesn’t take her as long as she pretends.  She hasn’t forgotten her Proving, yet.)

When she finally announces her decision to the group, she gives half-hearted laughs as she picks those who’ll be at her back for this road.  She takes Zevran, because his eyes are sharp, and because he’s the only one who hasn’t questioned the way she stands.  Morrigan growls and stands straight and understands far more than she lets on of the curling Orzammar tongue, so Natia pulls her along, too.  And she grabs Alistair to back her, not because he fights well or because he understands what’s going on, but because Natia has come back here because she’s a Warden, and Wardens fight together.

\--

Bhelen’s man gives her orders: talk, fight.  And she lets her tongue slip across grating words while they dance around the city, pulling on strings that will make Harrowmont fall.

(They visit the Shaperate and she is shaken back to the scared little girl on dusty streets.  She knows people lie; that doesn’t bother her.  But she’s smacked in the face with the reminder that _she is dust_ and dust isn’t worth remembering.)

(She vows to be worth remembering.)

\--

It’s the request to take down the Carta that almost kills her.  She’s been avoiding Dust Town.  It feels too new and too old all at once, and she’s not sure she can stand to see what she has always been.

She can’t stop the way the stress drops out of her shoulders at the sight of Leske, leaning against the basin.  She knows a thousand things, and the biggest is that Leske is _loyal_ but Leske is _weak_ and she doesn’t know which one has won.

“Damn, salroka!  The fuck you been doing?” she says, and she knows which one she hopes is stronger.  She pulls him into a strong-armed hug and slaps his back and he does the same to her.  And then she remembers herself and turns to her companions.  “Guys, this is my brother.  Leske, these are…well,” Natia laughs, “They’re keeping me alive.”

Leske gives a half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and Natia knows that she’s lost.  “I suppose I ought to thank you all for keeping my little sister safe up there, then.”

\--

Natia remembers the way he smiles as she strikes him down.  She’s not surprised, not in the least.  Leske had words, but words mean nothing without a blade to back them up.  At least his death was swift, in her hands.

\--

It’s with no little fear that Natia accepts to enter the Deep Roads.

But first, she has to meet her family.

\--

It’s been nearly a year since she’s seen Rica and Mother, but it barely seems it.  Mother greets her with curses and Morrigan reacts, but Natia just shrugs it off.

“Mother’s been in the drink again, Rica?”

Rica sighs and shakes her head, hovering somewhere to the side, like she always has when Mother gets going.  “Yes, and there’s plenty to go around in the palace here.”

The party is quickly left behind as Natia and Rica start talking, rapid curls and rough vowels that definitely aren’t Trade.

“I thought the dwarves don’t have a language.”  Alistair whispers, to little more than the air.

“And it appears that is false,” Morrigan counters, never one for invisibility.

The world comes back together as Natia steps back, pulling herself back from _Little Sister_ to _Warden_.

“Natia,” Rica starts as they head towards the door, “Atrast tunsha.”  She seems to struggle for words for a moment before shaking her head sadly.  “Atrast nal amgarrok,” she chokes out.

And Natia smiles.  “Atrast tunsha, Rica.”

\--

It’s around a surging fire that’s barely keeping the deepstalkers at bay that Natia finally sits long enough to translate her words.

“I’ve always known I’d go to the Deep Roads.  It’s kind of what happens when you’re a murderer.”  She waves away concerns.  What is, is.  “And there are words that are said when you go.  It’s a way to – I don’t know the words – stop being of the people?  Something like that.  Rica was trying to figure out if now was the time to say them.”

“And what did she decide?”

“I’m not dead, but I’m not hers.  She told me goodbye.  And she wished me victory always.  It’s a traditional thing.  Half of one, really, but who gives a fuck about tradition?”

Natia doesn’t mention the other half should have been _peace everlasting_.

Dusters know better.


End file.
